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PHOENIX  We will miss Heath Bell when he is gone. We will miss his closing and we will miss his candor. We will miss his bowl-full-of-jelly sprint to the pitcher’s mound and his, “I’m in shape. Round is a shape,” T-shirt.

We will miss a major-league pitcher who is part bulldog and part lap dog, the cuddliest competitor on the National League All-Star team.

We will miss him terribly, but perhaps only temporarily.

“You’ve got to keep all the doors open,” San Diego’s singular relief pitcher said Monday. “There’s still an opportunity for me to get traded and then, after that, sign (back with the Padres) as a free agent. Maybe Jed (Hoyer) calls me up and says, ‘Hey, do you still want to take a discount?’ I might say, ‘Yes.’ ”

With shopping days dwindling before baseball’s July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, Bell estimates the odds of him being dealt at “90 percent.” He has no illusions about the predicament of the Padres, no reason to think Hoyer, the club’s general manager, is coiled to spring a long-term deal on him, and nearly no contractual control over where he winds up until he becomes eligible for free agency at the end of the season.

For an overgrown child, Bell is being awfully adult about this whole business. He’s not completely resigned to a change of scene, and not the least bit resentful about it. Unlike so many of his more programmed peers, Bell not only acknowledges trade speculation, but contributes to it. He doesn’t cop the typical and unconvincing pose that he’s too focused on today’s game to contemplate tomorrow. He reacts like a real guy on a subject that turns most players into intelligence-insulting robots.

“I thought there was definitely a chance we could do something (with the Padres),” Bell said during an All-Star media session. “In my head, I still think there’s a chance. If Jed doesn’t get exactly what he wants, maybe they’ll start by saying, ‘What do you want?’ Maybe they’ll start negotiating.”

He wants to keep the door from closing, even if he has to prop it open with remote possibilities. Like so many Padres fans, Bell’s thinking is part wishful, part wistful. Like Bob Dylan, he doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

“My wife told me a year ago that relievers and closers all last about three or four years in a city before they move on,” he said. “We’ve been here for almost five years … I don’t really feel like I’m being pushed out. The organization is going in a different direction and, unfortunately, I’m not a part of it.”

With luxurious bullpen depth and limited payroll flexibility, the last-place Padres are entitled to wonder whether Bell’s $7.5 million salary involves funds that ought to be reallocated. Though Bell has saved 117 games as Trevor Hoffman’s successor, he has pitched only 37 innings in the first 92 games of the 2011 season. On that basis, he’s earning roughly $115,163 per inning and $6,415 per pitch. Since Bell’s price will surely rise higher in free agency, the Padres’ path appears obvious.

If there’s a contending club prepared to surrender decent prospects in order to rent a reliever for two months, that’s an opportunity Hoyer cannot afford to miss. Since several clubs might meet that description, Bell’s Monday media availability attracted reporters representing numerous markets and the same basic question: How would you feel about playing for (fill in the club)?

Bell played the game adroitly, acknowledging the more rampant rumors (Philadelphia, St. Louis, Texas, the New York Yankees), mulling over the wild stabs (the Dodgers, seriously?), leaving every possible door open and no bridges burned.

“I like the National League ’cause I know everybody,” he said. “But then I look at the American League and they don’t really know me…”

Meaning?

“I don’t think in the major leagues you can trick anybody or fool anybody,” he said. “Everybody kind of knows everything. But the American League hitters haven’t really seen me. But then again, I haven’t seen them … If I get traded to the American League, I’ve got a lot of homework to do. But they also have a lot of homework to do.”

Bell neglected to mention the language barriers posed by a theoretical trade to the Tokyo Giants, but he was ruling nearly nothing out. If the Yankees want him to serve as a set-up man for Mariano Rivera, Bell is “good to go,” at least through the end of the season. Bell wants, expects and deserves to be a closer in 2012, when he will be free to choose his employer, but he is agreeable to a subordinate role in the short term.

From the Padres’ perspective, the ideal scenario would involve a trading partner that wanted Bell as a long-term solution, one that was willing to extend his contract and prepared to part with a better class of prospect in order to get a deal done. That would be the only trade scenario that would require Bell’s consent.

“That would be cool,” Bell said. “I don’t really know how that works, to be honest with you, but if they want to sign me long-term, I’m not going to say no.”

His stated preference is to pitch for a club that’s trying to build as opposed to one that merely wants “to play.” Despite the standings and their spending, Bell puts the Padres in the “building” category.

“I think they’re just doing it slowly,” he said. “I think they’re doing it the right way and you sometimes have to clean up the mess before…”

Bell paused at this point to clarify that the mess he had in mind was the Padres’ farm system.

“I’ve been here five years and there’s really not a whole lot coming out of the farm system,” he said. “Not a whole lot. It’s just one of those things. When you have to build a team, you need to start drafting. You have to work from what you have and you have to build from the ground up.

“If you’re going to build a house, you don’t start with the roof. Sometimes you might have to take out this wall or that wall to put in better walls or electricity.”